The author’s argue that rural discontent over chronic poverty, corruption, and the failure of the government to foster development is widespread in Pakistan and that land tenure and property rights are one aspect of these problems. Post-independence Pakistan has retained a feudal system of land tenure in which an elite class of landowners owns vast holdings worked by tenant farmers and laborers who live in persistent poverty. The Taliban is building popular support based in part upon anger over unequal distribution of land and unfair owner-tenant contracts.

This paper discusses the trends of the superior courts on succession and inheritance rights available to women in Pakistan. While analysing some relevant landmark judgements from independence to 1992, the changes and development in the law regarding succession and inheritance over a much longer period of time have been traced.

This article highlight some impacts of a project initiated in Pakistan’s Sindh province, in 2008, to distribute 91,000 hectares of cultivable state land to 80,000 poor and landless peasants, many of them women. Indeed, 21,000 hectares of land to be distributed during the project’s second year is to be reserved for women, who are traditionally left out of land reform schemes and have less opportunities to own land.

This paper will attempt to examine the changing nuances of women's economic positioning in rural Sindh and probe the possibility of land ownership as a means of empowerment, while exploring the local discourse around it.